Machines don’t have to become superintelligent to cause catastrophic harm. As artificial intelligence spreads through military decision-making, they just have to be wrong – and trusted by the humans in charge.
In 1991, Terminator 2: Judgement Day gave us one of popular culture’s most enduring images of AI gone wrong. Humanity builds Skynet, an artificial intelligence given control of strategic defence. It learns at a “geometric rate”, becomes self-aware and, when its human operators try to shut it down, it starts a nuclear war.
